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REVIEW: Earth to Echo

I was wondering why it looked like a Disney flick but said it was a Relativity Media production, so I dug a little deeper and found originally it was shot by Disney and then sold to Relativity. Disney usually holds on to everything I thought.

It's been called a modern day ET and maybe it will be perceived as that by some but it's not as great as ET was. Major difference is that the ET creature is a living organism and Echo is a robotic type creature that says it's not a robot.

"Earth To Echo," is set like a mock documentary similar to "Super 8." The kids in the movie have recently found out that they've been the subjects of eminent domain and a new freeway has made them lose their homes. They're all moving away and it's their last night together so they figured they document it by video. After getting mysterious disturbances on the cellphones that looks like a map they set off to find where the signal is coming from. That's when they discover, Echo a creature that looks like a mini-robot. The freeway construction workers are actually some type of government agents who shot down Echo's spacecraft but can't find him.

It becomes a series of out running the agents to help get, like in "ET", Echo home. The sad part of the film is that the families were duped into vacating their homes because of a fake freeway. The uplifting part is that it shows the power of love, friendship and a child's innocence to figure out that Echo was scared, lonely and a good being that just wanted to go home. The adults wanted to kill Echo because they were sure he was the key to a spaceship set out to destroy Earth. Were the kid's right or the adults. We'll have to wait for "Earth To Echo Pt. 2," Where giant robots come back to destroy Earth...oh wait, that would be "Transformers!"

We took a Girl Scouts group and they all said it was a sweet story but also thought it was very sad.

I loved the concept of a mockumentary BUT it's tiring to be spoon fed how they're getting the footage. They lay out the different camera's including spyglasses to prove it out. So one kid at a restaurant just happens to decide to put on spyglasses for no reason so they can get the next close up? No way! "District 9," was the first spoof documentary that didn't always do that. I'm thinking there's enough of these out now so we don't have to proceed like that anymore.